We know it is the middle of August, but there are two important meetings of the Brookline Planning Board, and we hope you can attend one or both to speak up on behalf of more housing opportunities in Brookline.
On Wednesday, August 14 at 8:30 AM, there will be a Special Meeting of the Planning Board (via Zoom only) to review the Planning Department’s draft Warrant Articles prior to submission to the Fall 2024 Town Meeting. These include a proposal to reduce allowed height from 3 to 2.5-stories in certain single-family (S and SC) and two-family (T) zoning districts to “incentivize avoiding demolition in projects that seek to expand living area.” While we agree with the desire to avoid demolitions where possible, B4E is concerned about this potential downzoning of some single and two-family districts. When a similar proposal came before Spring 2023 Town Meeting (which passed as the new T5-NH district) in North Brookline near Harvard Street, we pointed out that our support was based on the Planning Board’s statement that this was a “stop gap measure to provide time for public discussion of the idea of allowing a third dwelling unit in the T-5 district . . . .” It’s now over a year later, we are more than ready for that discussion, and urge that any similar proposal for other areas of Town include the opportunity to add an additional dwelling unit. You can find the full agenda here, draft meeting materials here, and can register for the Zoom meeting here. You can also send written comments to the Planning Board ℅ Senior Planner Maria Morelli at mmorelli@brooklinema.gov.
Then, on Thursday, August 15 at 7:30 PM, the Planning Board will then have its regular meeting via Zoom (full agenda here, and Zoom registration here). After several minor matters, they will consider two significant potential developments:
- 264 Washington Street: The Planning Board will open a public hearing on a “Limited Standard Project Site Plan + Design Review” application submitted by Little Children Schoolhouse to demolish an existing 1-story building on Washington Street near the corner of Harvard in Brookline Village and construct a new 4-story building for a daycare center, matching the scale of the adjacent buildings, which is possible thanks to our new “Harvard Corridor” rezoning adopted as part of our MBTA-CA compliance. More information is here.
- 40 Kent Street/40 Webster Place: Then, the Board will hear a “Preliminary Presentation of Major Impact Project” for a proposed new 6-story residential building with 50 units (of which at least eight will be affordable), 24 parking spaces, and ground floor commercial. You can find more details here.
If you are able to attend, we urge you to support both these proposed developments, which we think are at an appropriate scale for their neighborhoods, and which will bring much needed child care and housing to our community. You can also send written comments to the Planning Board ℅ Senior Planner Maria Morelli at mmorelli@brooklinema.gov.
What We’re Reading This Week
- A Paradise of Small Houses: The Story of Incremental Development in America, by Noah Harper, writing on the Strong Towns Website, makes the case for 2-family, 3-family (including Boston’s classic triple-deckers), and other traditional multifamily housing forms, such as apartments over retail, and encourages us to look to that history as one way to add much needed housing capacity to our cities and towns.
- And then, for what is actually happening, sadly, check out this Globe from last Thursday article by Kara Miller: Massachusetts homes keep getting bigger: That’s not a good thing. One reason they are so big: “Builders might be able to cover land costs and make a profit by, say, building three townhouses on a lot, but that often isn’t an option because zoning restricts development to single-family homes.”